Email Addresses

[dwarfthrower]

OK, here's the deal...

A month or so ago, a colleague of mine and I left our place of employment and started our own company. Last week the general manager of the old company rang my business partner demanding to know why he was having a meeting with a customer of theirs. She'd found out about it because the customer had inadvertently sent the confirmation email to his old email address.

So, it would seem that not only are they still recieving mail addressed to us at our old addresses should someone send it there, but actively monitoring it. Now the ethical thing to do in my mind would be that if someone leaves your organisation, you shut off their email address and bounce anything that comes in addressed to them. I consider it a misrepresentation on their part to accept email addressed to myself or my business partner as agents of their company when we are no longer working there.

What I want to know is, is what they're doing legal... are you able to recieve mail addressed to someone who doesn't work there under the pretence that they do?

[biomechanic]

Could they have deleted the mailbox, but still have a catch-all/wildcard mailbox active?

[dwarfthrower]

They run lotus domino and I know the two mail files are still there. I'm not really concerned about that, they have every right to retain the correspondence that I sent and recieved as an agent of their company. I just don't feel they should be recieving mail addressed to me when I no longer work there, much less opening it up and reading it when it no longer has anything to do with their business.

[ShinymetalASS]

I don't think there is strictly a problem with them reading the mail. If they are clients of yours however, and your previous employer benefits from the correspondence (i.e. they poach someone), there may be some liability issues.

Not really my area.

Make sure all your clients recieve correspondence giving them the new addresses and outlining the change in business.

[stevecai]

isn't there usually a clause in your employment contracts preventing you from taking away your old workplace's customers?

[dwarfthrower]

isn't there usually a clause in your employment contracts preventing you from taking away your old workplace's customers?

I don't see how anything could "usually" be in my employment contract. It would either be there or not be there. But no, my previous employer didn't fill employment contracts up with unenforceable bluster like "you can't talk to anyone we've talked to in the past 25 years" or "You can't work within 30km of any customer, ex-employee or supplier of ours".

However, even if it was there, I'm no longer bound by the employment contract anyway and restraint of trade is illegal.

Besides which - we're operating in different areas, there's no "Taking customers away" that is possible, let alone likely.

[cranky]

have you considered shitting in their shoes?

[Maleficent]

All of our sent emails have a disclaimer type thingy at the bottom that goes like this

"The information in this e-mail together with any attachments is intended only for the person to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any form of review, disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication of this e-mail message is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, you are asked to inform the sender as quickly as possible and delete this message and any copies of this message from your computer and/or your computer system network."

Does your old workplace have anything like this in their emails? If so, they are hypocrits if they are reading email clearly address to you.

Legally, I wouldn't have a clue where you stand. Sorry! :)

[stinky]

It's common practice to keep old email addresses active and usually forwarded to the person that has replaced the person who left. I don't see anything wrong with it, it's usually just to make sure that any corrospondance sent to you by someone who doens't know you've left can be dealt with.

[dwarfthrower]

It's common practice to keep old email addresses active and usually forwarded to the person that has replaced the person who left. I don't see anything wrong with it, it's usually just to make sure that any corrospondance sent to you by someone who doens't know you've left can be dealt with.

What's wrong with it is using my name in conjunction with a business I no longer have any connection to. It's a misrepresentation and an unauthorised continued usage of my name after they have stopped paying me for the privilege of being able to use my name.

Any correspondence intended for me at that address could be easily dealt with by bouncing the email back to the sender with a message stating that I have left the comany and person x, y or z may be able to assist with their enquiry.

[Whiskers]

Without researching the area, I'd look to workplace surveillance laws (vic) and get your hand on your employment contract. If your contract is silent on this point, there still may be an implied term relating to this issue (I'm sure you appreciate the distinction between express/implied terms).

Possibly also raises issues of IP law. You may have IP rights in your email correspondence now that you are longer bound by your employment contract (confidentiality clauses and the like which extend beyond termination aside).

If I didn't have an essay due tomorrow I'd look into it more for you.

[Tintin]

As biomechanic mentioned, they could be using a catch-all address. They probably aren't, but they could easily claim that they are. This is a very common practice.

[pinchy]

sue them for using your name (as part of the email address)

[dwarfthrower]

As biomechanic mentioned, they could be using a catch-all address. They probably aren't, but they could easily claim that they are. This is a very common practice.

Regardless of how common it might be, recieving mail in my name without at least informing the sender that it will not reach me is unethical in the extreme.

[Deimos]

I wonder whether the legal implications would be any different if it was an actual physical letter addressed to you, rather than an email. Not knowing very much about law, I would say that the two should be treated in much the same way - and opening someone else's mail is usually frowned upon in a purely moral sense (not sure about a legal sense though).

[Sashasword]

It sounds pretty fucking dodgy to me, Dwarfthrower mate!

I think that the other people that have commented already in this discussion are right in that your previous place of employment should really be blocking off your email so it can bounce back to the sender if they use the wrong email.

To still have it active, and worse, apparently reading it, is absolutely not on.

Drop a PM to Sagacious and tell him the ins and outs of it.
I think he might have a bit of knowledge on this sort of thing.
Tell him Sasha says "hi". :)

I wish you a speedy settlement.

[Kez]

What I want to know is, is what they're doing legal... are you able to recieve mail addressed to someone who doesn't work there under the pretence that they do?

Did you sign an IT Policy in the beggining of your employment? If they had it written out correctly, you may have very well signed away your rights to your email, data and further correspondance...

How much work did you rake in for this company? I know that correspondance of people is often kept for anywhere up to 6 months, and they can also say they're collecting it to prevent a loss of the company. They're not using your name unless they start replying as you and imitating you. Unfortunately recieving isn't decieving customers....

If you want to play hardball and get them back extremely hard, get someone to send critical private data to the company regarding you (ie. Medical information, banking details, e.t.c) in large quantities, and frankly, go after them about it. Preferably, you could also act very cunty and say the email was sent before this current phone call was made, hence putting them on the spot when they say "But we aren't checking your emails". In court, this may hold up as they didn't "take reasonable steps to ensure that the individual is or has been made aware of the matters listed in subclause 1.3".

Also, check out the Private sector privacy ammendment (http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html). It might help you in some aspects, it might not.

That's just my take on it, I'm no lolawyer and may have my facts all wrong, but this is what my old workplace used to use before investigations took place, most of the time it also protected them too, some cases it didn't.

[Aurelius]

Dwarfthrower,
Emails received by your old business are theirs, by default of them owning the email address, and therefore anything addressed to it.
Privacy of those emails - while you worked there - is a grey area. Privacy of those emails once you leave is a grey area of a grey area.
You seem to indicate there's no "conflict of interest" or limiting factors on your new business clashing with your old, so I wont address that.
And yes, it would be much different if the letter were snail-mail rather than email.
Essentially, it's a grey area, and one which custom, technical issues, and law overlap in a weird and mostly untested and unregulated way.

I say name and shame the fuckers!

[stinky]

I don't see the big deal? They have every right to ensure they capture all business related corrospondance going to an ex-employee's company email address. They're not pretending to be you, they're just protecting their business.

Sure they could have a bounce-message explaining that you're no longer with them, and they should, however personally ( and I have done this in the past ) I would use an auto-attendant message saying that you're no longer with the company as well as checking your email.

If the company is doing anything more than making protecting their business by reading your email like prentending to be you, then yes there are ethical issues, but otherwise I don't see so. Company email belongs to the company, not the employee.

[Ic3]

I have to agree with stinky here. We had someone leave a few weeks ago who was involved with about 7 or 8 different clients and god knows how many contacts at each client. It often takes up to 2-3 weeks for word to spread that people have left, and in order for us to make sure we don't lose any contact with those clients, we have to keep checking his email.

However, we only check his email and grab any correspondence from the clients and then email to them to let them know that that person has left and the new contact at our company is Mr. X. I don't think there is a problem with them checking your old email, as I said, if it's for the running of the business they often can't afford to lose any correspondence to your old address.

But then yelling at you for talking to their old clients is definately not on, that pushes the boundaries a bit, but I don't think, by a legal point of view, there is anything wrong. Oh and in regards to the normal mail, I feel the same way. Anything coming to you at your old workplace needs to be checked to make sure it isn't important in running of the business.

[slaine1]

Strictly speaking, restraint of trade clauses aren't totally unenforceable, and even when you leave your employment, an implied term of confidentiality still subsists. So, the court will restrain your conduct to the extent necessary to protect your former employer's confidential information, unless to do so would constitute an _unreasonable_ restraint of trade.
So if you contacted the former client through using your former employer's confidential information (eg, if you stole their client list), then they may have a cause of action against you. If the former client just came to you of their own accord, or if you got the business through other means not constituting an abuse of your duty of confidence, then you can tell them to go jump.


As for them accessing your emails, it's a pretty grey area and one that warrants further research.

[skozombie]

An email address provided by your employer is their property, they paid for it, they own it. They own/pay for the servers that catch the email, so I dare say they also have a legal right to read what is sent there. This happens a lot in most companies I've dealt with, Manager A leaves, and Manager B replaces him/her, all of A's mail is forwarded to B. Short of that, the account is deleted and the admin person has a catch all and forwards misaddressed mail.

It would be nice of them to advise the person you no longer work there, but most businesses aren't nice, especially to ex-employees.